“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
― Winston S. Churchill
I have a map on my wall of my world I created back in 2008. I look at it and the several updated versions that I have tacked up around it every time I sit down to write. Every month I go to the bookstore and take a picture of where my books will one day go on the shelves. Ever since I caught the fire of writing in my soul, I have never stopped. I never will. I cannot imagine what I would do with myself if I did not write. It is the thing that wakes me up in the morning, most mornings. Sometimes it’s the need to pee, or that I have to get to work so I can continue paying for a roof and the comforts of a place to write.
Going months and months on end without hearing a single word from any agent that I have queried, or literary magazine or contest I’ve submitted to can be depressing. Tack on events such as: having your car keys, and your wallet stolen, your writing notebook stolen, (full of a year’s worth of ideas you wanted to keep), getting a rejection letter, having a bird poop on your head as you walk to your car in the morning, the coffee grinder breaking (that was almost the last straw) and being stung by a scorpion on the tip of your middle finger. Is the universe trying to tell me something there? All of these happened in seven days last month, starting the day before my birthday. No joke.
Note: people tried telling me that bird shit was good luck, but I remain skeptical.
Through a week of comical and not so funny happenings and all the other things that have happened in my life in the last few years, I write. As you do, as anyone who has the passion to do anything that has taken their hearts captive and won’t release them until we die. It is a beautiful thing, having that thing that drives you.
Then sometimes, through all your swinging at the world you finally get a hit, you at last make a mark. Even if it’s just a little mark, only one that you can see if you look in the right light, you know you hit it and maybe that’s all you need. Back in April of this year, I submitted to a contest one of my favorite stories, The Wandering Oak. It’s a origin story of sorts for the main character in my first novel, Mother Made of Iron, for which I am still seeking representation. I got the news recently that The Wandering Oak finished in the “Top 2 percent,” and received Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future 3rd Quarter 2019 Contest. The contest features writers from around the world and the anthology has been around for 35 years. Though my story is not being published in their anthology as they have finalists and semi-finalists to publish, I am posting it here on my website in the Fantasy & Other Fiction section. I hope you will read it and maybe even leave me a comment or two.
I got a hit! It’s not a big hit, but I can see it, and that’s enough to keep me going. Happy writing to everyone!